Yesterday morning we drove to the Flagstaff area and visited Walnut Canyon National Monument. The mesa-top visitor's center is about 6700' in elevation and the canyon cuts down into the mesa about 350'.

It is a beautiful canyon and every nook and cranny in the cliff walls are filled in with prehistoric houses and storage rooms.

More than 80 structures built between A.D. 1100-1250 can be seen during the hike although there are many more outside of the area accessible by the public.

There are also dozens of residence and storage structures built on the mesa top near their crop fields (the canyon bottom is way to narrow to grow any crops). However, the canyon hosts over 375 species of wild plants, many of which are edible (including the Arizona black walnut) and possibly explains the canyon's population density.

After hiking the canyon, which was tiring because of all the vertical along the trail, we drove up through Sunset Crater National Monument. It erupted sometime between A.D. 1065 to 1085, so there were probably a lot of people living in the area that were blanketed with volcanic ash. Interestingly, the ash dramatically improved the local soil fertility and there was a subsequent influx of people. This story is fundamental to our afternoon stop, Wupatki National Monument.

Construction of the Wupatki Pueblo began around A.D. 500 but rapidly expanded during the century after the Sunset Crater eruption as at several other smaller pueblos in the vicinity. At its peak Wupatki contained 100 rooms and a Mesoamerican style ball court (and there were other Mesoamerican items such as scarlet macaw feathers).

According to the park archaeologists, Wupatki was built by the Sinagua people (the same culture who built Tuzigoot, Montezuma Castle, and our RV park site in Cottonwood). However, the influx of approximately 2000 people into the region after the Sunset Crater eruption brought adjacent cultures together. Wupatki ended up as an international community with a remarkable blend of foreign attributes (architectural styles, pottery types, copper bells, etc.).

Like so many other pueblos in the region, Wupatki was abandoned by A.D. 1250 possibly because of a few decades of drought. Like everywhere in the Southwest small groups began gathering together in major river valleys and started building large pueblos and extensive canal systems (like at Casa Grande which we reported on early in our adventure blog).

Today we are lounging around the trailer reading and writing and watching some TV. A storm front is moving through with gusty winds, and there is a possibility of a little rain. Tomorrow we move to the Grand Canyon for a few days, and then off to Bryce Canyon for a few days. We will stop in SLC next weekend on our way to Pocatello (estimated time of arrival is Tuesday, April 10+).